“A person is a fool to become a writer. His only compensation is absolute freedom.” ~Roald Dahl
Last time we talked, I promised you that I’d explain the method to my kindle publishing madness. So I’m going to start right here.
Introducing The Great Kindle eBook Publishing Experiment: My Kindle Publishing Success Formula, Beta Version!
So far, as I mentioned in my last post, the sales of my Kindle ebooks are surprisingly good. I have increased my royalty income from less than $50 every few months to more than $1,000 PER MONTH by the third month, where I am now. Imagine what I can do if I get this thing down to a science.
Today, I’m sharing the basic phases of the publishing process that I’m using for each book, from the idea and research phase (pre-writing) to the writing and production phase, publishing and then of course marketing. And it is an ongoing cycle.
The Skeleton of the Cycle for My Kindle Publishing Success Formula, Beta Version
1. Research – I’m reading everything I can get my hands on regarding how to be a successful Kindle author. This includes Kindle ebooks, blogs, forums, ezines and more. Plus I’m listening to podcasts, watching YouTube videos and taking online courses. These books and most of my research in this area fall into a few main topic areas.
- Kindle eBook prewriting ideas and topic generation processes to set your ebook up for success
- Kindle eBook writing processes and tips
- Kindle eBook formatting tips for bestselling authors
- Kindle eBook marketing tips and processes
- Research for my own books is done in the pre-writing phase.
2. Production – Creating and formatting the actual ebooks – from the writing to the editing to the covers, table of contents, index and everything in between. (Check out what one Kindle marketing expert says are nine pages that must be included in every best-selling Kindle ebook.)
3. Publishing – the submission to KDP. Once your book is written, edited and formatted, it’s time to publish it to Kindle. I could do a whole tutorial on how to actually do all that, and maybe I will one day soon. But today? I don’t have time for all that – so when you’re ready, just visit kdp.amazon.com and follow the simple instructions to upload your book and cover.
According to Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing, these are the benefits to using the platform.
- Get to market fast. Publishing takes less than 5 minutes and your book appears on Kindle stores worldwide within 24-48 hours.
- Make more money. Earn up to 70% royalty on sales to customers in the US, Canada, UK, Germany, India, France, Italy, Spain, Japan, Brazil, Mexico, Australia and more. Enroll in KDP Select and earn more money through Kindle Unlimited and the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library.
- Keep control. Keep control of your rights and set your own list prices. Make changes to your books at any time.
4. Marketing – You probably already know what I’m going to say here, right? Sure, marketing isn’t as fun as writing sometimes. But if you get creative and have fun with it, it can totally make a positive difference in both your book sales and your personal life. I cover marketing a lot here on this site, but there are tons of other awesome resources for it, such as the following.
- Fellow Kindle authors
- Authority bloggers
- YouTube Videos
- Udemy classes (or other online learning platforms)
5. Lather, Rinse, Repeat – At any time on any given day, I’ll be in literally each one of these phases on different books. This makes for an interesting time, but thanks to my experience in newsrooms and freelancing for so many years, I’ve got a pretty good ability to keep my arms around various tasks and to produce high-quality work pretty fast.
Stay tuned – this formula is ever-evolving. What are your best Kindle publishing success tips? Share them in the comments section, below or hit me up on Facebook.
